LEWISTON, Maine — Recently, several hundred members of Holy Trinity Church watched pastor Jeremy Woods eat breakfast, work on his sermon and make a Starbucks run. Woods had just joined a growing group of pastors who are broadcasting their lives 24/7 on the Internet.

“When I first heard of going live I thought, ‘This is the future of pastoring but I’m not sure I like it,'” Woods says.

But after a month he says he “totally digs it.”

“It’s the next step beyond blogging or even live blogging,” he says. “It’s about sharing life.”

The trend is believed to have started in 2004 when Rick Givens of New York’s West Side Church decided to make himself “more accountable and accessible” by webcasting every waking moment live. But his pioneering effort has forced other pastors into awkward decisions.

Donald Taylor, 37, of Nebraska didn’t want to go live, but relented because of pressure from his board. He hated his first week.

“It was like being in prison. You never have a moment to yourself,” he says.

But soon he began to enjoy having a constant audience.

His wife particularly likes it because “he behaves more,” she says. “It’s like having God looking over your shoulder. You never know who’s watching.”

To go live, pastors outfit their offices and homes with surveillance cameras and clip miniature video cameras to themselves which are linked to the Internet via cell phone. During counseling sessions and other sensitive occasions the audio is cut and faces are blurred. At night, pastors set the camera facing a closed bedroom door so viewers can see that they haven’t left the room.

Gloria Danelovich of Portland, Ore., is one of the several hundred people who regularly tunes in to her pastor’s life.

“It feels reassuring to know I can see him anytime,” says Danelovich, who keeps a video window of him open on her computer all day. She and other viewers sometimes chat about what he is doing as it happens.

“Someone will say, ‘He’s going for coffee,’ and we all try to guess what he’ll order this time,” she says. “It’s a double espresso. It’s always double espresso.”

But there can be complications. Recently viewers heard Woods use a mild expletive when he dropped his coffee at Starbucks.

“My cell phone started ringing immediately,” he says. “I had to apologize a dozen times.”

Fifteen-year-old Bart Bukoski happened to tune in one night to see Taylor arguing with his wife. He quickly alerted his friends, and soon “half the church was watching the pastor break each of the beatitudes.” Taylor apologized at the next Sunday service.

Friends of youth pastor Jonah Burger of Missoula, who went 24/7 in March, sometimes use the Internet feed to harass him.

“They’ll call while I’m at the grocery store and say, ‘The girl in front of you looks hot. You should ask her out,'” says Burger, who is single.

But some pastors are resisting the mounting pressure to go live. At a recent all-church meeting at Pine Grove Assembly in Sanford, Fla., a church member stood up and asked pastor John Jakes why he hadn’t gone live yet.

“The implication was that I had something to hide,” says Jakes, 48.

Jakes told them he would go live when each of them went live, so they all could keep tabs on each other.

“That stopped the discussion,” he says. “I’m a happy 5/2 pastor. Five hours and two days of services per week. If they want more of me, they can schedule an appointment.”

But 24/7 enthusiasts insist live video is the next step in creating intimate Christian communities.

“This is my life, unedited and unscripted,” says Woods. “How much more authentic can it get?” •